Anyone, at least anyone of a halfway decent sort, who has for a time made the city of Boston their home, will have a well earned aversion to Saint Patrick’s Day. In Boston, or I suppose in any city where the Irish diaspora has chosen to nest, the venerable institution of St. Patty’s feels about as cheap as an oversized, shamrock green top hat, and stinks like a puddle of emerald puke. I’m no puritan myself, I love an excuse for a good day-drunk even more than the next fellow, but one can only listen to so much Dropkick Murphys and Foxborough brogues before one begins to bleed from the ears. It’s enough to make you pine for the good old days of an Gorta Mor.
Even so, I refuse to give up on the holiday just because it’s been embraced by louts. As a celebration of Irish heritage, St. Patty’s is about as authentic as a McShamrock Shake, but authenticity can be overrated, and most things in life are what you make of them. And I want to make St. Patty’s enjoyable. I’ve just enough Irish blood to give me a bit of skin in the game, but beyond that, Ireland is remarkable enough in its own right that it could do with an annual bit of celebrating. It’s a small island, with a tiny population, and yet it takes up an outsized role in the cultural consciousness, and for good reason. Poets, writers, musicians: it’s a bit ridiculous just how much creative potential has sprung from so inauspicious a rock. And the Irish people, too, are remarkable. They are at once the most cheerful and the most dour of folk, the most talkative and the most laconic, the most optimistic and the most steeped in cynicism, the finest of the fair and the most crooked of gob-shite goblins. The Irish are like everyone else, only more so.
So how to go about celebrating a day that was never even traditionally celebrated by the very people you’re celebrating? Drinking isn’t a bad start of course. Much and more has been made of the Irish penchant for drink, most of it amusingly hyperbolic, but at the end of the day the undeniable coin of truth is that the Irish have been know to take a drop or two now and then and we’d all be better if we followed their lead. But for the love of Joyce nothing green, and by God go easy. I personally swear by the fortifying and enlivening effect of a Guinness or two in the bright and wakeful hours before lunch. That’s the time, as well, to start a steady intake of suitable mood music. For me it’s typically the Pogues. I’ll start with ‘Red Roses for Me’, then work my way through the catalogue, pausing at some point to look up and then marvel at the fact that Shane McGowan is still alive. Astounding. The Pogues are a good choice because they strike the right balance between the maudlin and the smash-mouth: I want to weepily bid Kitty farewell, but I also want to break the landlord’s fucking balls. You’ll find it easier to vacillate between the two moods if you’ve started on the aforementioned pints.
As the day progresses, a proper meal or two are in order. Corned beef and cabbage seems to be de rigueur, a hoary old standby trotted out once a year and eaten rather dutifully and without much affection. I for one quite like a nice boiled dinner, and would never speak ill of a few slabs of corned brisket with mustard. But sometimes it all just seems a bit basic. The point of the holiday shouldn’t be to cleave to some invented idea of authenticity, but rather to interperate the conceit of the day through the lens of good taste. Otherwise why not just eat a plate of boiled potatoes and get blind on poteen?
This year, my wife set the menu. She’s as fond of corned beef as I am if not more, but she went in a different direction. If Ireland has any unifying theory of cuisine, it’s probably this: humble fare, but made lovingly and with good ingredients. Think roasts, fresh fish, and the lamb and beef stews that are some of Ireland’s most well know dishes. When you stick to a singular recipe or a particular plate, you venture into the realm of parody. The boiled dinner, ceremonial and oft mocked, is the prime example; it’s a symbolic dish, but symbolic of an invented fiction. Better to take cues rather than prescriptive notions and just make something tasty. Preferably something hardy, and well sourced, and good for soaking up whiskey. The wife decided on a Guinness pie, a lovely marriage of stew and savory pie (a cookery item that we could do with more of in this country). The particular recipe for this pie came from Fergus Henderson, a Brit, but one very much of a mind with the Irish ascetic, and his fingerprint on the dish is apparent from one key ingredient which I’ll soon mention. But basically its a simple dish, simple pub grub, but executed well. The wife started with three pounds or so of our own grass-fed chuck, and to that added the typical carrots, celery, garlic, rosemary, and red onion. I’d never presume to cook a stew without beer (or red wine were I feeling Francophilic), and this one was no different: four cups of Guinness added sweet maltiness. The Henderson touch came with the addition of a cup of ‘trotter gear’, the catch all name for seasoned pigs’ foot gelatin, ‘foot cheese’ instead of ‘head cheese’ if you will. Pigs’ feet, or trotters, once slow cooked off the bone with a few savory ingredients, set up into a wobbly, semi-solid mass of unctuous goodness that can be then applied liberally to bring body and depth to any dish. The trotter gear did the trick here, it proved to be a secret ingredient of delicious efficacy. The stew, slow simmered and then reduced, was transferred to a baking dish, covered by a simple rough-puff pastry, given an egg yolk wash, and popped into the oven. While it finished, I set about piquing our appetites with a dram of something good to sip on.
Two years ago in Ireland I embarrassed myself by trying to order a cocktail in a bar. We were in a fairly posh little seaside town near Wicklow and I presumptuously asked the barman for an Old Fashioned. He looked at me as if I was speaking Swahili. I cleared my throat, and, looking down, mumbled that I must have mispronounced “Jamesons neat”. The barman fetched the unadulterated whiskey and I dutifully drank it and was grateful. It seemed the craft of cocktail making had not permeated Irish bar culture very much yet at all. It was only later, in Dublin, that the wife and I tracked down a bar that was know for mixing up the alchemical potions that I love to belt down with such gusto. It was a quiet afternoon, and the place was empty, but we mounted a couple stools and greeted the bartender. When asked what we’d have, we simply told the young man “dealer’s choice”. The wife, being pregnant at the time, was delivered a stunning mocktail, the rim of the glass laced with freeze-dried rose petals as I recall. I was presented with what the lad called a Tipperary Manhattan, and it was very nice indeed. It was so memorable, in fact, that I decided to mix a few up for this St. Patty’s Day.
It’s not a complicated sort of drink, merely a Manhattan that has substituted a portion of sweet vermouth for green Chartreuse. I make my Manhattans with rye whenever possible, but I had a nice gift-bottle of Redbreast Irish whiskey in wont of using, so I laid that down as the base. I then doled out equal amounts of vermouth and Chartreuse, stirred well, garnished with a few Luxardo cherries, and served. The balance wasn’t quite there, a little Chartreuse forward perhaps, but that just meant I had to dial the portion back and try again with a second batch. Such a pity. It’s a lovely little drink. I’m always happy for a recipe that incorporates green Chartreuse for it’s a wonderful liquore, but its strong herbaceousness can quickly dominate a drink. Here, it reminded me of the hills of county Wicklow, lush, rolling, and green. It was, in fact, the only sort of greenery I’d abide in a Saint Patrick’s Day drink.
Strengthened and made hungry by the cocktails, we were ready to tackle the pie when it emerged from the oven golden and aromatic. A bit more beer was consumed, and the pie was happily devoured. ‘Hell’s Ditch’ was playing through the speaker, and perhaps that was an emblematic musical note to end the night with. It’s not the greatest of the Pogue’s albums, but it has its highlights and it has its merits. Certainly it’s the least traditional: much like the Irish people it sets out to visit the four corners of the globe, and barely seems to look back. Listening to ‘Summer in Siam’, you’d be half surprised that it’s the same band who gave us ‘Poor Paddy’ or ‘The Waxies Dargle’, but if you listen closely, the old tin whistle is still there. It’s just changed, it’s grown into something, it’s Ireland by way of Thailand. Nostalgia for the old songs, the old idea of Ireland, is all well and good, and I for one love the classic melodies and a creamy-topped pint of Guinness in the morning. But change can be nice too. Listen to the tracks off the later albums. Interpret a traditional dish by way of a British chef. Mix up a fancy-lad cocktail instead of drinking your whiskey neat. No people are as prone to contradiction or self-revision as the Irish, and so perhaps no means of celebration is amiss. Whatever brings you joy on St. Patty’s Day, by all means do it; just try not to get green vomit on your neighbor’s shoes. Slante.
The Edible Complex 